Where Digital PR, social communications, Media, pop-culture and entertainment converge.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Lots To Catch Up On...Coldplay, Google Books, Economy...

So I took a bit of a hiatus after a weekend away in the backwoods of upstate Pennsylvania (Potter County, aka: God's Country - Beautiful Mountains, Nice But Ass-Backwards Peeps, Great Fishing, Hunting), but time to get back to it...

COLDPLAYI went to the Colplay concert this past Monday at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ (right next to Giants Stadium); really good concert which I saw from a luxury skybox; glad I went (especially because it was free and I was with friends), but would never pay for the skybox experience and would be hesitant to do that again; concerts are supposed to be a visceral experience, an assault on the senses, and the box literally and figuratively puts a barrier up between that. That said, I had a great time, and I thank the peeps who invited me to attend...here's some video footage from the concert...enjoy.

The EconomyCan we finally acknowledge that we are in fact in a RE-CES-SION? Not only did the U.S. economy shrank by 0.3 percent during the third quarter, but there was a 3.1 percent decline in consumer spending, the sharpest drop since 1980. And with the Holiday season right around the corner, it doesn't take a genius to see the writing on the wall that the upcoming holiday sales be one of the worst ever, further cementing the fact that we are indeed in a recession (despite The National Bureau of Economic Research still not officially labeling it as such).

THE GREAT DEPRESSION, PART DEUXThis week marked the anniversary of the market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression; the irony is clearly not lost on any of us, and frankly a bit eerie; let's hope it doesn't ever get to the point as it did in the photo below...

GOOGLE BOOKS?This past week Google settled two copyright suits brought by book publishers and authors in a landmark legal case that allows them to continue to scan books and make them available on the Internet. The deal will make it easier for Google, publishers and authors to profit from the digital versions of printed books.

Since Google announced this project four years ago, they've been working with the likes of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections; Google has already scanned 7 million texts, including everything from classics to textbooks and how-to books. It will be interesting to see how this changes the publishing landscape as a whole, in addition to how this will affect Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Boarders, not to mention the longtail affect on technology gadgets (iphone, iTouch, Blackberry, etc.).

and finally...THE ELECTION

Yes, I had to save the best for last. With four days until election day, there's not much to say that hasn't been said to-date. Regardless of who you're voting for, the most important thing to remember come election day is this...